


Abyss

by felilivargas



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 03:52:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7997581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felilivargas/pseuds/felilivargas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Janeway, in a moment of introversion, speculates emptiness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abyss

**Author's Note:**

> If you dissociate at mentions of things like, "I'm not sure if I did this thing or dreamed of doing it," this fic contains stuff like that, so please be cautious.

I think humans fear emptiness.

We fear death because we can't be certain there's anything after it. And as much as we love space, a part of us fears how vast it is, and how much of it is empty.

In the old days, people feared the dark because they couldn't see if anything was coming for them. I can't help but think about the analysis we'd done on A Midsummer Night's Dream when I was a teenager. At the time, I'd dismissed it. Of course the forest was scary; you never knew what was lurking behind the trees and in the bush. But sailors had long written about the woes of being long at sea, desperately screening the horizon for anything resembling land.

Before the days of first contact, aliens were a thing of mystery. A decent chunk of humankind denied their existence, writing it off as fantasy. But scientists and dreamers alike looked to the skies, knowing- no, yearning- that there was someone else out there. That they weren't alone.

I set my coffee down.

Being so far from Earth had brought the crew closer together, but the comraderie was bittersweet. No matter how many people surrounded you, the community never felt real. You said your hellos and made your conversation, talking about what replicator meals you'd been trying and what holodeck programs you'd been running when you're off duty, said your farewells, and left. And in that solitude, you realize nothing you just did feels like it happened. You could have dreamed the entire conversation.

You think about what you said. Why did you say it? What drove you to open your mouth and procure those syllables? You try to speak for a moment as the turbolift doors are still closed. I say my name. "Janeway." The syllables are slow, as my lips and vocal cords try to remember how to function as one again. The name feels foreign. I don't speak in the loneliness again.

It's been years since I felt Earth's air and soil beneath my feet. I used to think visiting alien worlds was exciting; now it's just bittersweet. The rush of an unexpected wind on my back brings me back to Starfleet Academy, as the costal winds whipped my hair into a tangled frenzy. I can't help but remember how I'd seriously considered bringing a hairbrush with me between classes because even if my hair was in a ponytail, it would still get tangled! Sometimes, the smell of the grass and the soil is just a hint of something away from the scent of Indiana. It carries me back to my childhood, of staring at the stars and wishing I could be out there, full of curiosity.

I was so full of wonder. What am I full of now?

I try to remember that wonder. I try to feel the trepidation of my first day at a new school, or my giddy excitement the day I graduated from the Academy, or the pit of gried that hung in my stomach when my mother died, or the sense of thrill when I first stood on the bridge of a starship as it entered warp. I tried to remember the terror of cramming for a math test, or the ecstasy of trying my first cappucino, or the glowing warmth of being hugged by my father as a child, or... anything.

But I'm still empty.

I pick up my coffee again, and adjust myself to look out at the stars. I know I'm trying to get home for the crew, and to see my friends and family and lover again, but it feels so impossible. It's not something I let myself feel, and especially not something I let myself show, but I know the crew feels it too. Whether they distract themselves with their hobbies or their work, they're hiding from something, running from themselves as much as we're running to get back home.

I wish I could find something meaningful again. I wish I could grow closer to someone and be filled with something beautiful. But the longer I stay out here, the more the distance between me and everyone else seems to grow, until the infinities between all of us seem just as distant as home, and just as hopeless as our dream of returning there.

But what is a relationship? It seems like it's just a continual exchange of words, conversations tied to conversations that alter your opinion of each others' personalities. But a personality is just a set of reactions to outside actions, and so many of those outside actions are other people reacting to things, so what is a personality? If a personality is defined by the outside world, then, in and of itself, does it hold any meaning? It seems so futile.

Sipping my coffee, I stare out at the stars that pass me. I take in the depth of them, watching how the most distant barely move even as space itself warps around the ship to propel us forward at a speed faster than light itself. Everything, I realize, everything is so empty. It has no purpose, nor meaning, nor sense of itself.

And I think humans fear that, because when there's nothing to react to, we're forced to confront that we're just as empty.


End file.
